


everybody knows

by RecoveringTheSatellites



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst with a Happy Ending, Don't copy to another site, F/M, but they are going to go through some stuff on their way there, con artist!Killian, fun and pain and angst and a mother of a redemption arc, this will get SUCH a happy end
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-04
Updated: 2021-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-16 15:00:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29826696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RecoveringTheSatellites/pseuds/RecoveringTheSatellites
Summary: In Killian's world there are neither heroes nor villains.There are only those who give and those who take, and you better not be the former.He's a taker, has spent his entire life being a taker, because if you're a taker, there is never a price to pay.Until there is.AKA: The paths towards love and the meaning of life are twisted and tangled and full of detours, and some of those roads aren't paved..
Relationships: Captain Hook | Killian Jones/Emma Swan
Comments: 22
Kudos: 24





	everybody knows

**Author's Note:**

> ...here we go again with the plot boa constrictors.  
> Thank you so much for coming on this ride with me!
> 
> Fic title stolen from Leonard Cohen (and Concrete Blonde).
> 
> .

**PART I**

_ Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future. _

_ \-- Oscar Wilde -- _

  
  


-/-

  
  


“I’ve got your next mark.” 

Neal leans back in his office chair and tilts his head at Killian. 

The way Neal occupies space is reminiscent of bad 80s primetime soaps. There is something desperately oligarch-esque about the way he reclines, puts his left boot on his desk, and hands Killian a manila envelope.  
It’s painfully suave. Especially in this office, full of beaten-up furniture from a long-ago heyday, and ancient neon overheads that flicker more than shine. 

Killian sits down and takes the envelope. “Who is it?”

Neal’s eyes narrow. “Society girl with her hands on a vast fortune.” 

Killian pulls out the file and his brow furrows. “Fortune? It doesn’t look like she’s worth anything.” 

He looks up. Neal is scowling -- unusual for a man who prides himself on his indifference, especially when it comes to business matters.

But when he answers, his voice is devoid of inflection. “She’s just slumming, trying to make it in the real world without her parents’ money. But look at her last name.” He pauses to let Killian scan the first page again, and then says, “In reality she’s the heir to The Archer Group.”

Killian whistles sharply. “Archer Holdings? Archer Enterprises? Archer Real Estate? That Archer Group?”

Neal smiles darkly. “The very same. We can fleece her hard.”

“You know my rules.”

Neal scoffs. “Yes, Killian. I know your ‘rules’. But no matter how much we take from her, her daddy has much, much more. He will bail her out. This time we take it all.”

Killian frowns and holds up a printout. “This bank statement says she has 498 bucks in her checking account. What exactly do you want to take her for?”

Neal smiles again, even darker this time. “I have it on very good authority that she has a savings account with half a million dollars in it. Starting-out money from her parents. She’s just not touching it. So I say we take every last penny.”

Killian leans forward, his eyes hard, and slowly shakes his head.

Neal exhales in a huff. “Which part of ‘her father will just give her more’ do you not understand?”

It is in those moments that Killian realizes how much he hates Neal. And how much he wishes he had never entered this partnership. 

Well. 

_ Entered _ is not the right word -- it implies free will.  _ Coercion _ had been the name of the game, but then again, Killian had gotten into that situation all by himself. The kind of situation where saying ‘no’ was no longer an option, and now he is stuck with Neal. 

Killian sighs, but stays quiet. 

Neal stares back for a long time, before his lips widen in a smirk. 

“I’ll void your contract,” he says. “Do this job and you can go back to conning cougars.” He leans forward. “Cougars anywhere but this state, you understand?”

And there it is. 

Temptation.

Killian sighs. Sighs and closes his eyes and resigns himself to the fact that when the very thing you’ve wanted for years,  _ years _ , is finally within reach, the word ‘principles’ is just that.

A word.

Neal is dangling freedom on a hook, and Killian can’t resist the bait, line and sinker be damned. Principles, it turns out, aren’t worth much. 

Not much at all.

“Fine,” Killian says. “Let’s take her for everything she’s got.”

Neal smiles a smile of pure satisfaction and Killian feels as dirty as he ever has. He gets up. 

“I need something more than a promise, Neal,” he says. “I do this and I’m out. I need a guarantee.”

“My word isn’t good enough?”

“You’re a con artist. Of course it isn’t.”

Neal’s eyes narrow. “So are you. You run the best long con in the tri-state area and I take you at  _ your _ word.”

Killian raises his eyebrows and doesn’t answer. He doesn’t have to. Killian has rules and Neal does not. Everybody knows this. 

And cons are certainly not Neal’s only enterprise. He has his dirty fingers in a lot of dirty pies. Rumor has it his father runs the East Coast Mob from Atlantic City to Boston, which is how one Neal Cassidy has ended up with enough clout to coerce Killian into this ‘partnership’. That, and a few spectacularly bad decisions Killian made in at least three casinos. All of which had to do with him doubling down when he should have walked away.

But he’s not losing this staring contest.

“All right,” Neal says, and scribbles something on a piece of paper. “Here,” he hands Killian the paper after he signs it. It says, 

_ After the completion of the Archer Group heiress con, Killian Jones is released from his obligation to me. _

_ \-- Neal Cassidy _

“Good enough?”

Killian nods, staring at the note. At the potential it implies.

“What are you staring at?” Neal sounds impatient. “Still not satisfied?” 

Killian knows that Neal’s impatience is about to turn into anger, and he does not want to be here for that. The man has thinner skin than a white-guilt socialite. 

“Simply admiring your penmanship,” he smirks, and just like that, Neal grins.

“Get out of here,” he says and Killian nods and gets up.

When he walks out, Killian sees that now the warped office door is guarded by two heavy bouncers -- both of them pure muscle, no brains. In the lobby two nervous men in ill-fitting suits sit on a dilapidated pleather sofa, waiting to be called on. They look sweaty and nervous and like they can’t pay whatever vig they owe.

Killian leaves swiftly without looking back.

  
  
  


-/-

  
  
  


Killian takes his time with the recon. He cannot screw this up.

He doesn’t assume for a moment that Neal’s note is worth the paper it’s written on -- Neal is a scumbag and a liar and he bends the world to his will, backed by the rumor of his father’s might. He might as well have handed Killian a lollipop.

But.

The note  _ might _ mean something to Neal’s father. 

Killian knows very little about the mysterious Mr. Gold, but a handwritten piece of paper, a handwritten  _ signed _ piece of paper, may just be old-school enough for him. So he puts it in his safe-deposit box and hopes for the best.

Then he starts his recon and hits a snag right out of the gate.

The heiress works for a private investigator. It’s a small outfit, just two PIs, dealing mostly with cheating spouses and alimony issues. It looks like she runs the office and the clerical side of things - paperwork and bills, mostly. She does not have a PI license. As a matter of fact, she’s not really certified for anything, not even accounting.

There’s a puzzling and worrisome lack of information on her background and schooling.

If she’s an heiress, even one who’s determined to make it on her own, there should be evidence of an expensive education. But her school records are a diploma from William Cullen Bryant Public High School in Astoria and two semesters from Queens College in Flushing. Who fakes community college dropout records when they most likely have an Ivy League degree at their back?

What kind of heiress works for ten years doing clerical odd jobs? There are a few freelance fact-checking gigs on her resumé, mostly for the ghostwritten autobiographies of mid-level entrepreneurs who fancy themselves tycoons, but the secretarial far outweighs anything else. Her career, if it can be called such, has ‘front office’ written all over it and that is alarmingly puzzling.

Is she shunning her upbringing or trying to actually disappear? Because there’s ‘making it on your own’ and there is ‘stuck in a dead end for a decade’ and she is doing the latter. There has to be a very good reason for that, for the fact that she doesn’t just call home and have herself rescued.

There is also an absolute lack of relationships. Of any kind. He can’t find a shred of a lasting connection between her and anyone. Her entire life is saying  _ Keep Out _ and he shouldn’t be doing any of this.

She is a hard mark.

But also the most lucrative he’s ever gone after, if Neal is right about that savings account.

With a sigh Killian thinks of his freedom, thinks of no longer being beholden to a psychopath, and pours himself a generous shot of rum. Then he digs into the lives of the parents, the Archer Group CEO and her husband. 

There is an abundance of information on their charitable works and their environmental initiatives, markedly less on their various ventures and companies and virtually nothing on their private lives.

Their private lives are actually private.

They do not travel society. They don’t run the circuit, don’t attend ten-thousand-dollar-plate fundraisers, don’t rub shoulders with the glitterati, don’t walk down red carpets, don’t shake hands with the famous. They don’t summer in the Hamptons, don’t winter in St Moritz. Their main residence is a roof-terrace condo bordering Central Park and an old newspaper clipping mentions property not far from Aix-en-Provence, but that is all. All other candids and society page mentions are from before they were married, more than 30 years ago.

They do have a child. It is not mentioned by name anywhere. As a matter of fact, there is no information on it at all, none, neither gender nor age nor name, no matter how deep he digs.

He foregoes the shot glass, takes the next two pulls straight from the bottle, and stares at the wall for a long, long time.

  
  
  
  


-/-

  
  
  
  


The bar is crowded and dark and the music is loud and Emma’s date doesn’t show. Which is just as well. She’s mostly here because Ruby threatened to start setting her up with every guy in her building if she ‘didn’t get back out there’, and Emma cannot think of a single thing more humiliating than being set up on blind dates by your boss. So she went on the first dating app she could find and now she’s stuck at this bar, waiting for someone who is never going to show.

Then again, the music isn’t bad and the beer is on tap and cheap for the Village, and she’s not stuck in her apartment. And she doesn’t have to talk - she can just enjoy being out for a change. 

She smiles to herself, turns to the bartender, and orders another.

Two hours later the bar has emptied considerably and Emma is feeling weightless. She gets in one last order under the last call wire as someone pulls up a stool on the far side of the bar and orders a shot of rum and a beer. The bartender rolls his eyes and complies with a stern warning that this “has to be the last order” and the man nods and smiles and then turns to Emma.

“You get stood up, too?” His vowels stretch a little wider than normal, but he’s not slurring his speech. 

Emma nods. She’s too tired to lie and she has never cared about saving face. Besides, she had a night out. With beer. 

“Yep,” she says, pleased her own speech is not diminished in the least.

The man raises his glass. “Fuck ‘em,” he says. “They don’t know what they’re missing.”

Emma nods again and drinks to that.

The man moves to the bar stool next to her and Emma feels a small spike of worry, but his gaze doesn’t linger near her breasts or anywhere else it doesn’t belong, including her face. 

Instead he smiles, takes another sip, and says, “It doesn’t really matter anyway. Blind date, you know the drill.” He looks around. “It’s not a bad bar though. To be stuck in, I mean.”

“Yeah.” Emma says. “It’s my first time here, but I kind of liked it.”

“Same here.” He smiles again, open and honest and offers her his hand. 

“I’m Killian,” he says.

“Emma,” she replies. His handshake is nice and very firm. You can tell a lot about a person from their handshake.

“Excuse me for a minute,” she adds, and starts to make her way towards the bathrooms. It’s a thing she does, whenever she meets anyone new. Let them wait a few minutes, see if they stay or move on.

Many, many men move on. It’s good to weed those out right at the top.

When she comes back from behind a door that says WE DON’T CARE, JUST WASH YOUR HANDS he’s still there, calmly sipping his beer like it’s not ten minutes till closing, and then looks at her and shrugs.

“Are you hungry?” he asks.

She looks up, surprised.

“I’m starving,” he adds. 

She can’t help but laugh. “Seriously?”

“What?”

She rolls her eyes. He’s a piece of work for sure, but he hasn’t looked at her breasts once. “Is that how you do it? Go to a bar to meet one girl and when she doesn’t show you just pick up a substitute?”

He grins. “I don’t know. It’s the first time I’ve tried it.”

Emma shakes her head. “I bet it is.”

“Look,” he says. “I’ve had a crappy night and a lot of beer and now I really need some food. The greasier the better. There’s a diner down the street.” He gets up from the bar stool. “I’d love some company, but I understand if that’s not your thing.” His eyes narrow. “You look rather like a person who prefers to be alone.” 

That trips her up. Because it’s very, very true.

She sighs. “Do you think they have grilled cheese?”

He chuckles. “If they don’t, we’ll sue them. For taking the name ‘diner’ in vain.”

She pulls on her jacket. “In that case, yes. I’m starving. But don’t get any ideas.”

“Ideas?”

“Ideas.” She slides off the barstool, steadies herself for a brief moment. “Yes, we both got stood up, but this is not a date. Are we clear?”

He gives her a very serious nod and says, “Crystal.” and she can’t help but laugh. 

  
  
  


-/-

  
  
  


“So where are you from?” Emma pulls her grilled cheese halves apart slowly and looks up to find him watching her with a small grin on his face. “I love cheese,” she clarifies.

“Clearly,” he says, and his grin widens. “Bournemouth.”

“Uh, what?”

He laughs. “You asked where I’m from. The answer is Bournemouth.”

“Huh,” she says, and takes a bite. God it’s so  _ good _ . Her eyes nearly roll to the back of her head. But she cannot place Bournemouth. “Where’s that?”

He leans across the table, picks up the ketchup. “South of England. On the coast.”

England.  _ England? _ But--- 

“You don’t have an accent,” she says.

“Accents don’t stay.” He holds the ketchup out to her, but she waves him away. As if she would ruin her lovely onion rings with that. “We moved here when I was 13. I lost my accent years ago.”

“Huh,” she says again. Apparently she’s a sparkling conversationalist tonight. “I never would have guessed.”

“Yeah,” he says, and pulls a face as he tries a fry. “Expressions stay though.”

“Expressions?”

He smiles. “I am rather fond of the words ‘love’ and ‘bloody’.” 

It’s self-deprecating, the way he says it, with a playfully raised eyebrow. Whatever he’s doing, he’s not aggressively trying to flirt his way into her pants. He’s entirely too good-looking and he definitely knows it, but for the moment he seems to be content to simply have a conversation. Emma appreciates that, no matter his intentions. She hasn’t had a real conversation with a person who wasn’t Ruby in forever. And she can always shoot him down later, if he does decide to advance.

“Love and bloody. What an odd combination,” she says. “Why those two?”

“ _ Love _ is what my mum called everyone.” His smile turns wistful. “Everyone.” He clears his throat and then grins. “And  _ bloody _ is sometimes just better than going  _ fuck _ all the time. Although I must admire the word fuck for its versatility.”

“I know.” She laughs out loud. “I had a foster father who once used it in every part of a sentence. He said, “‘Fuck - this fucking fucker’s fucking fucked!” Which meant, ‘damn, the lawnmower is badly broken. I am not pleased.’”

He doesn’t laugh. He starts to, and then his face falls and gets very, very serious and a small warning light goes off in Emma’s head. This looks like baggage, and she’s not here for other people’s baggage. Not sitting in a diner at 2 AM with a perfect stranger at any rate.

“Not as funny as I thought, I guess,” she says, trying to gauge whether to cut bait, and he shakes his head.

“Sorry,” he says, and his hand comes up to scratch behind his right ear. “It was funny. You’re funny.” And he gives an odd look as he says, “I just--- did you say foster father? Were you in the system?”

“Yeah.” She shrugs. Noncommittal. 

He looks exceedingly puzzled. Like he’s never met a system kid before. Or maybe like---

“Do you have experience with--- that?” It’s out before she can stop herself. 

He looks at her for a long, long moment before he sighs and says, “Yeah.” He shrugs. “I have lots of experience with that.” His voice is quiet. “None of it good.”

It could be a game. It could all be for the sake of making a connection with her, if not for two things:

Nobody in their right mind would work  _ this _ hard for a hookup. Like there aren’t a thousand girls spilling drunk and high out of hundreds of clubs all over the city right now, ready to be plucked.

And also, he’s telling the truth. She knows about lies. This is not one.

“I see,” she says, just as quietly. “I guess it takes one to know one.”

He lets that sentence hang in the air, thousand-yard-stare in his eyes, and she pushes her plate at him. He raises a questioning eyebrow and she grins.

“You’ve been staring at my onion rings since we got here,” she says. “And eaten none of your fries. I can put two and two together.” She points at the plate. “Help yourself.”

This time his laugh is helpless. “Do you want the fries in return?”

“After the face you pulled when you tried the first one? Not on your life,” she grins, and his eyes flash. Then he takes an onion ring with the air of a general who’s surrendered the battlefield as she waits for the waitress to refill her coffee.

“So,” she says as she picks up her mug. “Who were you really waiting for at that bar?”

“What do you mean?”

She leans forward. “There is no way---” her eyes narrow--- “no way a guy that looks like you was waiting for a date. Or got stood up.”

He grins. It’s ridiculously obnoxious. “Are you saying I’m handsome?”

“Oh  _ please _ .” She gives him a full body eyeroll. “You know  _ exactly _ what you look like. And you know how to use it, too. Your charm’s so polished I can see my reflection in it.”

“Touché.” He laughs. “But I can still get stood up. I mean - you’re gorgeous and you got stood up.”

_ Oh no you don’t. You don’t slip a compliment between the lines just to change the subject. _

“But you didn’t, did you.” She can feel that there is more to his story, a lot more. “Why were you at that bar?”

“Fine.” He sighs. “I wasn’t waiting for a date.”

“I knew it,” Emma says. 

He gives her a long, measured look. Then he takes a deep breath and says, “I was waiting for a mark.”

“A mark?” She finally says. “Like-- ” Her voice trails off.

“Like a con man, yes,” Killian answers.

“You’re a con man.” He shrugs, and she sputters. “ _ You’re. A con man _ .”    
He laughs. “Yes.”

Now that’s just ridiculous. It’s the most ridiculous thing she’s ever heard.

“That’s insane.” She shakes her head. “I thought those only existed on bad TV shows. Or my email spam folder.”

Again with that damn eyebrow. “I’m quite real.”

“I can see that.” It’s still the most ridiculous thing she’s ever heard. Also the most creative. No one has ever used a line like that on her.

“I can see you don’t believe me.”

Why isn’t he laughing? He should be laughing. She should be laughing. 

Emma frowns instead. “You cannot possibly be serious.”

“And why not?”

A hundred thousand reasons, starting with,  _ this is the most ridiculous thing ever. _ But most of all--

“You’d never tell me. Why on earth would you tell a perfect stranger? Over onion rings and coffee?”

There’s a pause, a very long pause, and then he says, “ _ Because _ you’re a stranger, of course.”

God _ dammit _ . It’s the truth, all of it, so far he hasn’t lied to her once, and fuck.  _ Fuck _ . What the hell is going on and what the fuck is she still doing here? 

He leans forward, slowly, and his face is thoughtful. 

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I can see this is a bit much, and I apologize. It’s just--- you’re a person in a diner. You’re lovely company, don’t get me wrong, but you’re inconsequential. I can spend a few wonderful hours with you and then walk out of here and never see you again.” He lifts up both hands in supplication. “My line of work does not lend itself to forming attachments or having confidantes. Sometimes it’s nice to just have a normal conversation. You know-- one where you’re not trying to achieve a certain outcome.”

Emma laughs. “ _ Achieve a certain outcome? _ You mean, one where you’re not actively playing someone?”

“Well, when you put it that way, it sounds----”

“Like the truth?”

This time he laughs, and it’s genuine and self-deprecating and  _ warm _ . “Yeah. I guess it is.”

“OK,” Emma finally says when they’re done rolling their eyes at each other. “In that case, tell me all about yourself.”

“That I cannot do, love,” he says, and the word  _ love _ sounds odd and foreign to her ears. “To keep my true identity hidden is paramount, you understand.” The way he wiggles his eyebrows should be illegal.

“How very secret agent of you,” she says, and his eyes flash in amusement.

“Well, I am a criminal. You can see how I’d want not to advertise said fact.”

It’s surreal, all of it.

“How do you know I won’t call the police right now and have you arrested?”

His hand flies to his heart in mock despair. “You wound me, Emma. You would do this to a man who’s just trying to have a bit of conversation?”

She shrugs and he laughs again. 

“Oh, you’re what my father would have called a  _ tough lass _ for sure _. _ ” His eyes shine. “But I don’t think you could have me arrested. I haven’t done anything.” That eyebrow.  _ Again _ . “Well, not anything in your presence to witness.”

“Damn,” Emma says. “There’s a flaw in every perfect plan, isn’t there.”

Killian’s eyes turn unexpectedly serious for a moment as he nods. “There certainly is.”

“So tell me something else. Anything else. About being a con man.”

“Well,” he says. “Everyone does it differently. There are hundreds of cons and hundreds of ways to run each one. But the hard and fast rule for citizens is that you should never give money to a stranger.” 

“Do people really give money to strangers?”

He exhales, slowly. “You’d be surprised. As jaded and callous as people think they are, most of them are soft-hearted in the end. All you need to do is give them a good reason and they’ll practically throw their fortune your way. When really, you should never give anyone your money. Least of all a recent acquaintance. You at least have to know the person since grade school.” He shrugs. “If people followed this one simple rule, I’d be out of a job.”

Emma chuckles.

“What?”

She grins unrepentantly. “The way you describe your work as a ‘job’. Like it’s a legit way to make a living.”

“Screw legit,” he says. “Some people have too much money and I liberate a bit of it. If I took Jeff Bezos for a hundred billion dollars,  _ a hundred BILLION _ , he’d still have a hundred billion left. That’s a one with eleven zeroes.  _ Eleven _ . You and I and everyone else on this planet, including Jeff himself, by the way, cannot picture that amount of money. Nobody should have that much money.” His eyes grow hard. “There are 195 countries in the world and more than half of those have a GDP of less than that. And they’re by no means just ‘poor countries’ on continents nobody cares about. Some of them are in Europe. Some of them are  _ Portugal _ . Imagine that.”

“Oh. So you’re Robin Hood.” Her tone is snide. His sudden intensity is true in its indignation, but false in its compassion, she can feel it. “Did you rehearse that speech much?”

He bursts a laugh.

“You’re right,” he says. “I’m certainly no Robin Hood. I steal from the rich. Those who can afford it. Those who have so much money that they hardly feel it when I take some. But I do keep it for myself, that’s true.”

A yawn suddenly overtakes Emma and she realizes that it is late. Very late. It’s past 3AM, her coffee and her food are gone, and she’s having a conversation about wealth distribution with a self-proclaimed con man. She’s tired, and she’s had enough absurdity for one night, entertaining though it was. 

He smiles at her. “Sleepy?”

“Yeah.” She nods. “I will say that this has been a very interesting evening.  _ Unbelievable _ , actually.” She waves at the waitress, mouths the words, “Check, please.” and turns back to the man across from her. “But I really have to go home now. I can hear my bed calling me from all the way across town.”

The last sentence is a test. But he makes neither joke nor innuendo, and his eyes never leave her face.

“Will you be all right to get home? Can I get you a cab?”

A  _ cab _ ? What decade is he from?

“I don’t use private ride companies that subcontract and exploit their workers.” His face is dead serious, and it’s simply too much for Emma. She starts to laugh and finds herself unable to stop. 

This is the most bizarre evening she can ever recall spending. With  _ anyone _ . And that includes being stuck in a New Jersey holding cell with a self-proclaimed reincarnation of Nikola Tesla who lectured her on quantum harmonics for more than two hours.

She has to wipe her eyes as she tries to calm down, and protests as Killian simply pays for them both, but he waves his hand at her.

“I had a really good time with you,” he says. “The least I can do is pay for our meal. Especially since I ate half of yours.”

Emma erupts in a fresh burst of laughter and realizes that she is skirting hysteria. Fatigue and surreality and a witty deadpan delivery are doing her in, but Killian doesn’t seem put off by any of it. He hands her fresh napkins to dry her eyes and somehow organizes a glass of water without getting up, and just waits for her to rein herself in.

“Sorry,” she says, when she finally manages to calm down.

“Don’t be sorry,” he says. “You have a nice laugh.”

She fixes him with a glare, but he holds up his hands again. 

“Objectively speaking,” he says. “I am not hitting on you, I swear.” He gets out of the booth and hands her her jacket. “I’m just trying to make sure you get home OK, that’s all.”

They go outside and he studies her gait, but she’s pretty much sober by now and he nods.

“I guess you’ll be all right,” he says, and she raises her arm, but the cab she’s trying to hail blows straight past her.

“I’ll be fine,” she says, squinting down the avenue for another one.

“I believe you,” he answers, and they both watch the next cab pull up to the curb.

He opens the door, waits until she gets in, and then leans forward.

“Actually,” he says, and she thinks,  _ here it comes _ . But he makes absolutely no move to get into the cab with her. Instead he hands her a small white card. 

“Don’t worry,” he says. “I’m not trying to get in your pants, I promise. But I would like to ask you a favor.”

  
  
  


-/-

  
  
  


37 minutes later Emma falls into bed, her pajamas inside out, her makeup barely cleaned off, and her curtains still open, which will prove unfortunate right around sunrise. But it’s not yet sunrise. It is almost four o’clock in the morning and Emma is fast asleep.

On her nightstand lies a small white card.

  
  
  


-/-

  
  
  


The text from Neal comes in at 3:59AM, just as Killian is turning off the lights.

_ Is it done? _

Killian sighs and picks up his phone and types two words.

_ It’s done. _

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> i'm thisonesatellite on tumblr if you want to come say hi!


End file.
